Ars reviews GarageBand for iPad: a killer app for budding songwriters

Apple has moved GarageBand from the desktop to the iPad, re-imagining it as an …

Smart Keyboard

The Smart Keyboard is sort of a third cousin twice removed of "Casio Chords." Tap a chord and GarageBand plays it.

The Smart Keyboard gives you the option to play a simplified piano, electric piano, electric organ, or clavinet powered by a sort of variation on the classic "Casiochords" from Casio's inexpensive keyboards. These instruments have somewhat simplified controls, and instead of having a full keyboard, they have columns of pads limited to eight "auto-chords."

The key of the song controls which chords are shown. If your song is in C major, your chord options are E minor, A minor, D minor, G, C, F, B flat, and B diminished. My limited music theory knowledge couldn't fully explain the choice of chords here, but Apple assured me that these eight chords make it easy to play along with the selected key. It seems these are mostly for accompaniment as opposed to being used to develop melodic rhythm lines, though I found it difficult to put together anything more complex than a typical I-IV-V progression that sounded good to my ear.

Each chord column is divided into eight sections. The top five play variations on the basic chord up and down the keyboard, while the bottom three sections are separate bass notes. Just tap an area to play the corresponding chord or bass note of the chord noted at the top. There is some velocity sensitivity, but we could only discern two levels instead of three here.

Above the row of auto-chords is a knob labelled "Autoplay." The knob has five positions: off, 1, 2, 3, and 4. The numbers each represent different automatic rhythm patterns. Switch to one, and the auto-chord pads change configuration, with a small top pad, a large middle pad, and a medium-sized bottom pad. Tapping the middle will trigger the "high" part of an rhythm pattern using the selected chord. Tapping the bottom will play the "low" part. Tapping the small pad at the top will play both the high and low parts.

You want the funk? Try the Smart Keyboard's Autoplay mode with the Clavinet preset.

Multi-finger taps also trigger variations on the chord or rhythm pattern for the middle pad. Apple told Ars that tapping with one finger will play the basic chord, two fingers will play a sustained chord, and three fingers plays the seventh chord. We're sure this trick works for piano and electric piano when Autoplay is in the "1" position, but otherwise, it seemed to mostly change rhythmic variations. We did discover, though, that you can use the Autoplay chords to record a section, and then later switch that track to a different smart instrument to get a different sound. While the Autoplay rhythm patters are more "typical" for the different instruments—clavinet patterns are funky while electric piano patterns are more subdued—playing patterns designed for one instrument with another sounds just as good.

When not using Autoplay, you have access to the sustain switch. There are also a few options to tweak the Smart Keyboard's sound. The organ has controls to change speaker rotation speed and tone distortion, the electric piano has tremolo and chorus knobs, and the clavinet has auto wah and phaser knobs.

Smart Drums

Just drag drum parts to the grid for nearly infinitely variable drum patterns, or roll the dice for a random pattern.

Like the keyboard, GarageBand also includes a "Smart" variant of the drums, which lets you automatically generate beats and drum patterns. A large 8x8 grid dominates the Smart Drums interface. Along the right are icons for different drum parts, like bass, snare, hi-hat, tambourine, etc. Drag one of the icons to a spot on the grid to start playing a pattern.

The position on the grid determines the complexity of the pattern, and how loud or quiet the particular drum or cymbal sounds will be. Move parts to the left for simpler patterns, or to the right for more complex ones. Moving a drum up makes it louder, and moving it down makes it quieter.

On the left is a large button that lets you choose among the three drum kits and three drum machines described earlier. As we mentioned, Smart Drums include some alternate percussion instruments—for example, the Classic Studio Kit includes tambourine, shaker, and congas. This allows you to build more complex drum patterns than is possible with the regular drum kits alone.

If dragging drums and cymbals on a grid wasn't easy enough, though, there is a small button with a six-sided die on it. Tapping this button will arrange various bits of the drum kit around the grid randomly. If you don't like it, you can either manually tweak it, or tap the button again for another random pattern. There are thousands of different ways to arrange the patterns, so there's a lot of room for experimentation. Furthermore, you can rearrange the drum parts into different spots on the grid as you record, so it's possible to change the pattern on the fly. (There are other ways to use different patterns for different parts of a song, which we'll discuss later.)

Smart Drums could potentially be used as a drum machine to play repetitive patterns during a live performance, if your musical style calls for that. But like the regular drums, we'd rather use it for experimentation or working out a rough sketch of a song to be sequenced or recorded later.